Grand Staircase - Escalante Loop (aka the loop of doom) - Day 2
Grosvenor’s to Escalante: We woke up early in the dark (4:30), knowing that this day was going to be arduous. The notorious Death Ridge loomed before us and we were hoping to get there and through that section by the time the 100+ degrees set in. We were starting out with about 8L of water each, left from the day before, as we were unable to filter from the reservoir next to Grosvenor’s Arch. The scummy body of water was beautiful to look at, but rather nasty enough to not even consider filtering. We were on the road by about 5:30, just when the sun was rising. Little did we know, that wasn’t nearly early enough to get through Death Ridge is any formidable time to avoid the heat.
Ryan having breaky at 3:30am
As I crested the first steep hill, I thought to myself, oh that wasn’t half bad. I was able to ride the whole thing and it wasn’t too long. Once the guys got up there, we celebrated under false pretenses that it was one of the worst of the climbs of the route for the day. We took a brief reprieve and took in the view. Things deteriorated from there.
The portion of “road” between that first crest and getting to Death Ridge is quite the blur. I think it was a mix of rutted out, washed out roads to sand to steep kicker climbs that were unrideable. We kept trudging foward, though, trying to beat the heat. We finally got to the turn off for Death Ridge and I remember thinking, “Wait, that wasn’t death ridge that we were just riding?” And the realization that we were going to be stuck on Death Ridge right in the heat of the day made me cringe. Alas, when you are in it, you’re in it and we had to get to Escalante by the end of the day. The original plan was to continue on after a refuel in Escalante but as we continued on, we realized that we were far behind our initial schedule and may need to change our 3-day iternary to a 4-day.
Death Ridge was NO JOKE and took us much longer than expected. Because of such a treacherous monsoon season, many of the roads were deemed impassible, even by 4WD vehicles, and they were in crazy shape - even for bikes. It was much worse than expected and the hike-a-bike business was real, even for Patty and Ryan who are in tip-top-shape and are strong technical riders (which made me feel a bit better about how much I was walking). I managed to fall over a handful of times - all but one of the times was because I had to stop suddenly and I couldn’t get clipped out.
For some reason, my right pedal was insistent about holding on to my cleat, which made for pre-mature unclipping and multiple topples over. For the most part, I laughed it off, but inevitably became disheartened and distrusting of my pedals. The last “topple” came when I was careening down one of the steep rutted hills, following Patty’s lines. I’m a bit less skilled than he is and managed to get my wheel stuck in one of the ruts and came to a screeching halt and fell over. There I sat, hands in my head, with my bike lying in front of me, tears streaming out of my eyes. I just wanted to be done with the ride, and yet we still had about 15-20 miles left. Patty was a trooper and came to give me a pep talk, let me cry it out, and we were on our way. I swear, it’s not a bikepacking trip unless someone ends up in tears of frustration and helplessness. It’swhat you do after the tears, though, that is the most important. No one was going to come pick me up and carry me into town. I had to get there myself. So, we picked me up, got back on the bike and away we went.
Because of the haul and the task at hand, none of us really stopped for pictures or to enjoy the scenery, except for the one view above. This was the last time we saw Ryan until we got to Escalante. We didn’t realize, but Ryan was desperately needing to be off of his bike and was having a hard time of the heat. In general, he was a bit more speedy than us up the hill and by the time we reached the middle of death ridge, we were all looking a bit low on water. We had lunch at this spot and Ryan rode off and Patty and I played Leap Shade, stopping at each shade spot to avoid overheating up the long, steep, hike-a-bike climbs.
By the time we got off of Death Ridge, we were running very low on water (I had about 1/2 L) and stopped at every point that looked like it may have water. A few cattle troughs, a few ponds that were bubbling with polywogs, and a few dry wells proved dryer than a bone, and our mouths were getting dryer by the moment. I calculated that I could take a sip every two miles and I would be able to get home. In the mean time, we couldn’t really eat much because our mouths were so dry, we couldn’t really get any thing down our throats. Finally, we came across a cattle trough that had water. It was mostly covered with grass, but there were no cow pies nearbye and we didn’t see cows either and the actual water looked quite clear, so we decided it was our best bet. We filtered with both our steripen and our Sawyer filter and then went on our way. Shortly thereafter, about 6 miles from town, a Sheriff approached us in his pickup truck and mentioned that he had given all of his water to our buddy up ahead (Ryan), so he didn’t have any more water, but that he’d give us a ride into town if we wanted. Though normally, I am very much into the self-supportiveness and the purity of finishing yoru day no matter what , our water situation and the 106 degree heat called for a change of plans. We graciously hopped in his truck with our bikes loaded in the back and got the ride back into town.
When we arrive into town, we found Ryan at the gas station, sitting on the pavement, surrounded by almost every liquid possible, looking rather discouraged and ressembling a roasted chicken. He had finished just before we arrived and had run out of water and was suffering from heat exhaustion. He hadn’t been able to eat anything for the last few miles because of lack of water and was absolutely depleted. We decided, smartly, that we needed to call it a day and got a room at the Prospector Inn. After running to the mercantile riht efore closing and ordering some tasty food from Escalante Outfitters, we settled into our room to prepare for the next day, reevaluating where our stop would be for the next day and guzzling as much water and electrolytes as possible to try to recover from the effort at hand.
